Someone has reimagined London with nine boroughs and the internet has mixed opinions

London is made up of 32 somewhat chaotically divided boroughs. The sprawling higgeldy piggeldy metropolis is part of the city’s charm, right? Well, not really, as like most big cities, there’s a tonne of wealth disparity between different areas. One internet person, let’s call him the Robin Hood of maps, thinks he’s found the answer to London’s inequality problem – he’s drawn a map of the city with only nine boroughs, which he claims will redistribute wealth from urban to suburban areas. But Londoners have mixed feelings about it.  

On the map, shared on Reddit by its creator Alasdair Gunn, each borough has a population of just under a million, slightly smaller than Birmingham. It does away with Hackney, Wandsworth, Lewisham, Croydon and most of the other boroughs, instead merging them into nine super boroughs: Kensington, Camden, Islington, Whitechapel, Canary Wharf, Lambeth, Westminster, Southwark and Greenwich, each one with a connection to central London.  

But people on Twitter didn’t agree that London’s new cartography would do much good. One person tweeted: ‘I like the approach where every district is entitled to a slice of central London, but many communities have been butchered in the process. I guess that’s the point?’

Another added: ‘Awful. Lots of carving up of existing communities that are currently in a single borough.’

Another person tweeted: 'Tower Hamlets already has the richest and poorest parts of London, literally within 100yds of each other. How will making the boroughs bigger fix that?'

Some Reddit users were fans, though. One commenter said: ‘This is so chaotic I love it.’

Another added: ‘Good luck telling the City they’re part of Islington now.’

Gunn defended his map. He commented: ‘The idea behind this concept is to disrupt the consensus among wealthy people by taking their high-status stuff and sharing it.’

It might not be perfect, but we like the idea behind it. 

Someone else created a map of new London boroughs – with hilarious results.

Camden Council wants to build a 'Mini Hollywood'.